If the mayoral election were held today, the lightning rod union leader who was the architect behind a 2012 teachers’ strike would beat Emanuel by 9 percentage points in a head-to-head contest, the survey found.

Lewis was leading Emanuel 45 percent to 36 percent with 18 percent of the likely voters undecided.

Few of the council members are likely to have read all 113 pages of the bill, O’Brien says, but they were under pressure “in the form of a threat of an initiative from the TNCs. These multi-billion-dollar corporations told the City of Seattle that if we didn’t simply rubber-stamp this deal today without any scrutiny, we will face an initiative that writes the law to the sole favor of their bottom lines.”

Our trolls love to talk about how a $15 minimum wage 10 years from now will savage businesses. I was reflecting this morning on how dishonest businesses are as I peeled the wrapper off yet another package of pure pig fat falsely labeled as “bacon.” America has turned into a thoroughly corrupt society, with business leading the charge. Why should anyone sympathize with business? They’re crooks. Today, businesses devote all their energy and talent to deceiving investors, cheating customers, taking advantage of employees, evading taxes, and panhandling for taxpayer handouts. And that’s BEFORE vultures like Mitt Romney get hold of companies to strip their assets, rob their pension funds, destroy jobs, and turn once-profitable corporations into smoldering hulks. Business deserves to be the despised sector of society it has become. Forcing them to pay $15 an hour to the people who create ALL of our country’s wealth* — workers — isn’t asking for too much. Especially when they’ve got 10 years to prepare for it.

* Capital doesn’t create wealth. Work does. So why is capital getting 60% of America’s GDP, and labor only 40%?

International news sources are reporting a commercial jet has crashed in Ukraine. Malaysian Airlines reports losing contact with a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur carrying 295 people. Ukrainian officials are blaming the crash on a missile fired by pro-Russian separatist rebels near the pro-Russian stronghold city of Donetsk.

You are incorrect. The businesses that will be hurt the most are the small businesses that are franchises. In addition to the challenges of being small fish in a big pond, they have franchise fees to pay.

Because they are franchises, and because the City can pick winners and losers, small businesses that are franchises will face $15 minimum wage costs in only three years, not 10.

These small businesses don’t have outside investors. They don’t have 10 years to adjust. They have franchise fees and leases, which are fixed costs agreed to when they thought their labor costs were far lower than will very soon be the case.

There is no doubt a Malaysian Airlines jet carrying 295 passengers and crew has crashed in Ukraine with no survivors. There is news video of the smoke plume from the crash, and witnesses on the ground report seeing burning wreckage and bodies.

Initial reports said the plane was shot down by a Buk missile, which Ukrainian officials blamed on pro-Russian separatists, but Malaysian Airlines now says there was a terrorist incident aboard the plane.

@6 Why would franchises be “hurt” any more than any other business that can no longer get away with shifting a portion of its labor costs to taxpayers? I agree, however, that a clean ordinance raising the minimum wage for everyone to the same amount at the same time would be better for everyone than the mash the business lobby extracted from Mayor Murray.

U.S. intelligence has concluded the Malaysian Airlines plane was shot down by a missile. My guess is Russian separatists did it, thinking it was one of the Ukrainian Air Force jets that have been bombing them.

@6, @10 As often as not(particularly), a lot of “small-business” franchisees are actually owners of a half-dozen or more stores. In fact, in some cities there may be one company that holds the franchises for, say, all the McDonald’s or KFC outlets in town. Furthermore, just maybe this kind of “opportunity” (to become a franchisee) isn’t a very good deal. If the Mothership posts huge profits but charges such high rents and fees and dictates the prices for the product, such that the franchise owner can’t make a buck without paying the staff enough to subsist on, maybe the latter two parties are really being screwed by the first.

“If the Mothership posts huge profits but charges such high rents and fees and dictates the prices for the product, such that the franchise owner can’t make a buck without paying the staff enough to subsist on, maybe the latter two parties are really being screwed by the first.”

+1

Also, as KatWillow noted, why on earth would we care if fast-food franchises leave? That would probably improve the overall health of Seattle’s population, as well as making space, literally and figuratively, for true local food entrepreneurs to try original ideas.

If the best objection to eradicating poverty wages is really, “Seattle will have fewer corporate fast-food places,” then the case for $15/hour minimum wage is truly great indeed.

It looked like the Monday Morning commute in NYC was going to be worse than usual, as all options to delay a strike by Long Island Rail Road employees had been exhausted. Negotiators from the MTA, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and the Sheet Metal, Airline, and Rail Transportation Union suddenly returned to the table, and hammered out a tentative agreement. Unlike the 2005 Subway strike, this averted strike would have been legal, as LIRR employees are not governed by the laws pertaining to state employees, but the federal Railway Labor Act.http://newyork.cbslocal.com/20.....ng-strike/

After a strike happens under the Railway Labor Act, there are a few options that Federal officials and judges have to end or suspend a strike, though.

For years, I’ve tried to get across to readers of this blog that you don’t prosper in America by working for wages. The people who live in big houses, drive fancy cars, and enjoy nice vacations aren’t wage earners. And they don’t get their money by working hard. In fact, most of them don’t work at all. At most, they stand around telling others to work.

I ran across this quote from a 2010 Bernanke op-ed today on one of the financial blogs I regularly parse. You don’t need to understand the details; it’s the flavor we’re after:

“Easier financial conditions will promote economic growth. For example, lower mortgage rates will make housing more affordable and allow more homeowners to refinance. Lower corporate bond rates will encourage investment. And higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence, which can also spur spending. Increased spending will lead to higher incomes and profits that, in a virtuous circle, will further support economic expansion.”

In short, people prosper in 21st century America by becoming adept at gaming the system and manipulating various kinds of assets, especially financial assets. Work has nothing to do with it. Nineteenth century farmers quickly learned that hard work doesn’t pay because railroads, bankers, and middlemen stripped them of the fruits of their labors. Likewise, 21st century workers are being separated from the fruits of their productivity by various kinds of manipulation. Work harder, the boss says, and you might get to keep your job, although he doesn’t mean it.

Working for wages is what you do as a last resort if you have no other way of getting the money you need to survive. At least the 19th century farmer could live off the land to some extent by growing his own vegetables and chickens; heck, during World War 2, even urban dwellers had their “victory gardens.” Today’s wage slave has only three possible options for feeding himself: Earning for wages, panhandling, or supermarket shoplifting.

There’s a fourth way, become financially independent so you don’t have to work, but I don’t count it because it’s not available to most people. Most Americans’ financial future is predetermined at birth. By far the best predictor of whether you will prosper without working or spend your life as a struggling wage slave is who your parents are.

Our American mythology pays much lip service to “the self-made man (or woman).” I’m one of those who broke out of the wage-slave class to become one of the lazy, unproductive, useless members of the idle class who live on the backs of the uncompensated productive classes by gaming the system and manipulating assets. But few people would want to go through what I did to get there. The path from teenaged rabbit who hopped a freight train and struck out on his own with nothing but the fur on his back to lazy, unproductive, useless capitalist was a long and tortuous one, and it wasn’t fun along the way. I would much rather have been born a capitalist; but I wasn’t graced with such by my parents, damn them, which left me no choice but to do it by myself. To me, it was worth the effort and sacrifices necessary to accumulate the capital needed to sit on my butt and make far more than $15 an hour by doing essentially nothing.

I quoted Bernanke here because I want to disabuse you of any notion that our nation’s polices and values have anything to do with work. They don’t. Our system is designed to cater to capitalists, period. Everyone else — workers, taxpayers, members of the military, etc. — exists solely to make life comfortable and prosperous for the capitalist class; comfort and prosperity are not meant for you, and if you somehow manage to attain a small amount of it by working hard, it will be confiscated in some underhanded fashion, because allowing workers to be rewarded for their work would undermine the entire system.

I quote Bernanke to show you how subtle, pervasive, and effective those confiscation strategies are. It doesn’t even require snatching your wallet or purse, or stealing from your bank account. It’s simply a matter of creating money out of thin air, giving it to the capitalists, and they use it to buy up all the property and businesses. Then they raise your rent and cut your wages. It’s as simple and subtle as that.

Think I’m making this up? Then let me ask you a couple questions. How much has your rent been cut? How much have your wages gone up? Is the percentage of America’s total assets owned by the rich growing or shrinking? I rest my case.

You can’t lick ’em. The game is rigged. Workers can’t possibly win, any more than 19th century farmers had any chance of beating the Robber Barons at a game they invented and controlled. You’ve got to join ’em. The only way you can avoid being a loser at the capitalist game is to become a capitalist yourself. It requires capital, of course.

The best way of getting capital is, and always has been, by inheriting it. If your parents screwed you by not being rich and leaving their wealth to you, the next best way of getting capital is by stealing it, preferably by means that won’t land you in jail, which means working for Wall Street or at least a bank. But that requires being selected, and also requires abandoning our ethics to a degree most of us aren’t willing to do, so you’ll probably have to do it the hard way: By not spending, by getting out of debt and staying out of debt, by living below your means, by saving and investing the money that everyone surrounding you is using to live it up and have a good time. That’s awfully tough to do, but it can be done — although not on $15 an hour. If you find yourself in a position where you have to work for your capital, which is the worst way of getting capital there is, you’ve simply got to earn more than it takes to live.

However, if you can pull it off, once you’ve become a capitalist you won’t have to work, pay taxes, fight wars, or do any of the other unpleasant things piled on the working classes. You’ll be able to sit on your fat ass, like I do, doing nothing and producing nothing; and you’ll live well by gaming the system and manipulating assets. It has nothing to do with working hard. If you’re still working, you’re a failure under our economic system.

Because Federal Reserve policies are not meant for the working class. They enrich only the capitalist class. The justification used for these policies is their spending on sumptuous lifestyles will somehow trickle down to you. This, of course, is as nonsensical as the propaganda that “if you work hard, you’ll prosper.” They want you to believe that because, if you work hard, they will prosper. That’s how things really work.

“A staffer for Rep Tom Marino (R-PA) was arrested this morning for allegedly carrying a pistol into the Cannon House Office Building, Capitol Police tell NBC News. Ryan Shucard, who has been a press secretary for Marino since May 2014, was arrested and charged with a felony count of Carrying a Pistol Without a License when he entered the south east door of the Cannon building at around 9:15am and it was discovered he was carrying a Smith and Wesson 9mm handgun and magazine.”

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